Freight Counter Offer Tool

Shippers usually send their quote requests to carriers, who then submit their rates. It's a one-way process

Carriers submit their rates for a specific route just once. If they aren't awarded the shipping, they can't negotiate their rates to be more competitive.

Currently, there is no support for carriers to make counter-offers. However, the exploring Zendesk tickets it was clear there was a demand to improve negotiations.

The Challenge

Review the Spot Quote process to identify the gaps.

Allow shippers to send a counter-offer to carriers.

Allow counter-offer to start a negotiation between shippers and carriers.

My Approach

I observed Zendesk tickets and found that the execution team reported a common need among carriers: the lack of a counter-offer feature in the Loadsmart platform.

After analyzing the process of shippers requesting quotes from carriers, I identified an opportunity to add a counter-offer flow as an enhancement to the spot quote flow. The analysis showed that the moment in the quote flow when carriers' quotes are available and shippers are selecting a carrier for checkout could be the ideal point for shippers to request a counter-offer from carriers.

I proceeded to design a new flow for this feature and created additional emails to notify carriers and shippers about a counter-offer being initiated.

Further research showed that carriers are reluctant to create accounts for freight platforms. This is understandable because not every quote they submit results in a successful bid. Requiring an account to bid on a rate could discourage carriers from participating in the quoting process. Therefore, I proposed and discussed with the product owner that the rate input page should not require a login to increase response rates from carriers.

Carrier input prototype